What's the value of a conversation? Or hundreds of conversations? How about thousands? Should we place a value on them? Paul brings an interesting observation to the table—"you are basically paid to chat to people". And "chat" sounds so unimportant. Consider that the brief exchange above was triggered by this article in Ad Age which discusses the relevancy of brands on Facebook. This sound bite in the article in particular caught my attention:
"As it turns out, many people in social networks don't want to talk about your product, they just want to talk. We've long known that inserting brands into social-media channels requires a conversational touch, but many are surprised by just how conversational."
Yet we are surprised and confounded by this fact. Social technologies empower people to talk about what THEY want to and not about what YOU want them to. So, let's assume for the moment that this statement is a current reality. The next question becomes is there value to letting people talk about what they want to discuss? I believe there is. In fact, I believe that it's better than any focus group your company has ever conducted, and yet it's likely that your company still invests hundreds of thousands of dollars on traditional R&D and focus groups. In some cases these conversations (both positive and negative) leave a considerable "long tail" on the internet which can potentially grow your business or damage your reputation. Consider this increadible story on how one internet business actually thrives on negative comments to sell products thanks to exploiting loopholes in Google's search engine algorithm.
Social media's core innovation is directly related to unleashing and distribution of the opinions, thoughts, words, videos, recommendations etc. of both individuals and organizations alike. Why are we surprised that it takes a conversational touch in order to elicit some type of response? We shouldn't be. We also shouldn't be surprised that the touch actually does involve an investment of some sort and can result in measurable results—and results that are much more difficult to measure, like how a person feels about your brand/organization/company after you've allowed them to let off a little steam. Or, we can just dismiss it all as chit-chat.